White Paper
June 18, 2026
Event Recap
July 7, 2026
Hard questions are our starting point.
The Berkeley Economy & Society Initiative (BESI) investigates political and economic power to reveal how these forces shape the practice of democracy and the pursuit of shared prosperity.
The latest at BESI
-
-
Event RecapJuly 6, 2026
Suburban blues: The clash of local and national politics in America’s suburbs
-
BlogJuly 1, 2026
Summer workshop on political economy of finance brings together emerging scholars from around the globe
-
Event RecapJune 2, 2026
Muskism: A guide for the perplexed
-
Event RecapJune 2, 2026
Financial democracy or democratic finance?
-
BlogMay 21, 2026
Key takeaways from BESI’s panel on climate governance in California
-
Event RecapMay 21, 2026
California climate governance: How to move forward
-
White PaperMay 14, 2026
To make California more affordable, government must foster sustainable growth
-
In the NewsMay 14, 2026
Project Syndicate: ‘Europe needs the digital euro’
-
Event RecapMay 13, 2026
The rise of the strongman presidency
-
Event RecapApril 8, 2026
How to opt out: Lessons from 14 years of evading surveillance capitalism
-
In the NewsMarch 30, 2026
New Zealand Herald: ‘Major Wall Street figures have begun sounding alarms about private credit’
-
Event RecapMarch 25, 2026
What do the rich owe the rest of us?: A conversation on taxation and democracy
-
In the NewsMarch 20, 2026
Project Syndicate: ‘Is the private credit boom going bust?’
-
White PaperMarch 12, 2026
California’s unaffordability problem
Big problems. Big ideas.
Our research focuses on some of the most urgent threats to genuine, sustainable, and broad-based prosperity: climate change, technological disruption, and the distortions and demands of unfettered capitalism. We have launched major new programs on the political economy of California and green industrial strategy.
Advancing the interdisciplinary study of political economy
BESI funds crucial discoveries at the doctoral level.
We’re proud to support the Designated Emphasis (DE) in Political Economy at UC Berkeley. DE students participate in vital discussions outside their home disciplines, enhancing dialogues and enabling research at the cutting edge of scholarship.
Research spotlight
To make California more affordable, improve the effectiveness and efficiency of social spending
California, with its progressive tax system and dynamic economy, has some of the highest levels of per-capita government spending in the country. But state programs systematically suffer from fragmentation and complexity. Part 4 of our white paper series argues that, to make the state more affordable, we need to streamline and simplify public programs to more effectively help residents cope with high costs.
To make California more affordable, reform regressive regulations
To address its unaffordability problem, California must reform regressive regulations. Time and time again the state has pursued progressive goals through policies that raise the cost of essentials — hitting low-income residents hardest. This regressively funded progressivism is a major driver of California’s high cost of living. Part 3 of our white paper series explores how these costly and often ineffective regulations work and offers a path toward durable reform.
Democracy in default
Berkeley Program on Finance and Democracy’s research director offers a new perspective on the birth of neoliberalism, showing that — counter to the prevailing narrative — financialization was not the offspring of deregulation but the mechanism that allowed neoliberalism to take root.
Subterranean archives
Historians Robyn d’Avignon (NYU) and Matthew Shutzer (UC Berkeley) coordinated the Forum section for a volume of the journal Environmental History, in which novel archival sources and approaches take center stage. Situated in case studies in Africa, the Middle East, the Pacific, and the United States, the essays call attention to how underutilized archival knowledge has begun to reframe environmental historians’ approach to subterranean histories.
Collective self-determination and international authority in climate governance
In this article for the journal Political Philosophy, BESI climate affiliate Anna Stilz argues that to make climate governance legitimate and compatible with collective self-determination, future legislation should be voted on and authorized by a global assembly and enforced via carbon tariffs applied by cooperating states.
When federal climate policy works
In this monograph, BESI faculty affiliate David J. Vogel and CUNY political scientist Roger Karapin offer an original analysis of the federal government’s sectoral climate policy accomplishments over the last five decades with concrete recommendations for policy makers.
Chapter: ‘Institutional entrepreneurship in the creation of multistakeholder governance fields for climate change: The case of the corporate climate disclosure field’
In a chapter for “Organizations and Climate Change,” Volume 102 of Research in the Sociology of Organizations, BESI steering committee member Neil Fligstein and DE student Janna Huang trace the emergence and trajectory of NGOs and financial institutions that advance corporate accountability ability for greenhouse gas emissions.
How the economic and political geography of the United States fuels right-wing populism — and what the Democratic Party can do about it
In this essay for the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, BESI director Paul Pierson and his frequent collaborator, Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker, describe the shifting coalitional bases of America’s two major parties and how relate to the political-economic geography of the U.S.
The predistribution solution
Former Roosevelt Institute senior research Sunny Malhotra and BESI Capitalism and Democracy affiliate Steve Vogel and analyze the American political economy past and present through the lens of predistribution.
Fairness according to whom? Divergent perceptions of fairness among white and Black Americans and its effect on trade attitudes
BESI Climate affiliated faculty member Ryan Brutger and Designated Emphasis in Political Economy student Daniel Lobo co-authored this article for the American Political Science Review, which reviews their survey of white and Black Americans on their attitudes toward trade.
Toward an interdisciplinary political economy of wages
In a November 2025 article for the journal Politics & Society, UC Berkeley Political Economy director and BESI steering committee member Steve Vogel argues that that economists should bring power into the heart of their analysis of wage formation.
Aspirational service delivery: A theory of bureaucratic governance under digitization in India
Background and the shared puzzle India’s digital governance reforms are more centralized and ambitious than most other reforms. A single biometric identifier underwrites welfare delivery for hundreds of millions of citizens. CCTNS standardizes police record-keeping across thousands of stations. State-level dashboards visualize district performance in near real time. The stated…
Revisiting network neutrality for the enhanced internet
This project revisits the net neutrality debate in light of contemporary technological realities. Distributed caching infrastructure is no longer incidental; it is functionally necessary for high-performance internet service. The authors propose democratizing caching by requiring that first-hop ISPs offer standardized caching services as a component of baseline broadband access.
Visual stimulation in digital content
An increasingly important and overlooked dimension of digital content quality for kids is the level of visual stimulation. This project uses computer vision to quantify these overstimulating visual features that are linked to adverse cognitive and behavioral outcomes.
The development and adoption of religious AI: The technological restructuring of American religion?
This project looks at how AI is being developed and adopted within religious organizations. This is a project that spans disciplinary boundaries, bringing digital sociology and the sociology of culture into conversation with theology and religious studies.
To make California more affordable, improve the effectiveness and efficiency of social spending
California, with its progressive tax system and dynamic economy, has some of the highest levels of per-capita government spending in the country. But state programs systematically suffer from fragmentation and complexity. Part 4 of our white paper series argues that, to make the state more affordable, we need to streamline and simplify public programs to more effectively help residents cope with high costs.
To make California more affordable, reform regressive regulations
To address its unaffordability problem, California must reform regressive regulations. Time and time again the state has pursued progressive goals through policies that raise the cost of essentials — hitting low-income residents hardest. This regressively funded progressivism is a major driver of California’s high cost of living. Part 3 of our white paper series explores how these costly and often ineffective regulations work and offers a path toward durable reform.
To make California more affordable, government must foster sustainable growth
The primary driver of California’s unaffordability and poverty is our high cost of living. And the foremost driver of high costs in California is a policy regime that makes it difficult to build the physical infrastructure we need to deliver essentials, particularly housing. Part 2 of our white paper series on making California more affordable explains the origins of growth restrictions in California, explores the implications of those restrictions, analyzes the politics of pro-growth policies, and offers a path forward to achieve sustainable growth.
Democracy in default
Berkeley Program on Finance and Democracy’s research director offers a new perspective on the birth of neoliberalism, showing that — counter to the prevailing narrative — financialization was not the offspring of deregulation but the mechanism that allowed neoliberalism to take root.
When code isn’t law: Rethinking regulation for artificial intelligence
In this article for the journal Policy and Society, BESI Technology Network affiliate Brian Judge and his co-authors at the Center for Human-Compatible AI examine the challenges of regulating AI and propose an adapted model of regulation suitable for AI’s novel features.
Support our work.
Our work depends on philanthropic support and the generosity of donors. If you find our work valuable, we hope you’ll consider making a gift so our researchers can continue tackling the big questions.
